Imagine a man. Imagine that little man screaming his head off. Imagine that man not screaming in utter anger, but in pure joy for finding something he absolutely loved. That said “something” having low expectations at first, but blew that little man’s expectations away and became one of the greatest things he experienced this year. You probably weren’t expecting me to cover this of all things. How I even got to this in the first place. This short tale began two to three weeks ago during Thanksgiving break. I was busy playing the Psychonauts series and writing my reviews for both games. During that review process, my older sister was off binging dozens of shows she had missed over the last few weeks. If you don’t know, she's a huge fan of animation and an inspiring artist. One of the shows she ended up watching was popular at the time, and when she heard what it was based off of she wished me the best of luck. Reason she said this was because the source the show was based off had a terrible reputation. The show was named Arcane and it was based on the popular MOBA, League of Legends.
I give her a concerning grin and three days later she comes back and tells me it was the most excellent show she watched this year. She kept telling me how amazing it was and tried coming up with numerous reasons for me to watch Arcane immediately. I thought she was crazy at first. On one hand it's a show based off a video game, and any adaptation of a video game doesn’t go out well. Second hand it’s League of Legends, which has a terrible community and is said to be a cesspool for bad game design. It wasn’t until a few days ago when I had spare free time. I’m still trying to figure out what video game to cover next, so in the meantime why not watch some Arcane and give myself a break from the review process? Maybe I’ll only watch two episodes of it and call it quits. Within only two days I binged all nine episodes and realized, “Holy f*ck”. Arcane is so good. It’s so good. I don’t even know where to begin, because I wasn’t planning on reviewing this. However, I’ve been in an extremely good mood recently and Arcane would make for a really interesting discussion. Might as well write this while it’s still popular. This review will be chopped up into differentiating chunks, and one section will be dedicated to late events and ideas so I don’t spoil it for those who haven’t watched it just yet. Anyways, that’s all for now. Today we’ll be talking about why I loved Arcane and why it deserves your attention.
Separating Arcane from League
I do want to address the elephant in the room before moving any further. League of Legends, the popular online MMO developed and published by Riot Games. The project was very small at first with only a few individuals working on League of Legends before the company reached a total close to around 2,500 employees as of today. League of Legends was supposed to serve as a spiritual successor to Dota, otherwise Defense of The Ancients, another popular online MMO at the time. Dota was an interesting case though, because it wasn’t made using an original engine or any original assets. It was a mod for Warcraft III that had to be downloaded through specific means in order to get the online portion of it working. A couple of media outlets at the time had criticism toward Dota due to how difficult it was to download software through the internet back in the day, and whether that software was trustworthy or was a virus that could hack into your computer. In the end, Dota was received pretty well and ended up blowing up bigger than it should have. The founders of Riot Games, Brandon Beck and Marc Meril, used to hold Dota tournaments during their time in university and were intrigued with the core design of the game. What made Dota so addicting? They set off to make what was basically their own Dota, that being League of Legends. A proper build for League of Legends was opened to the whole wide world in 2009 and it has grown tremendously since then. A lot of modes, new characters, and new maps have been added and League of Legends has become a staple to online competitive gaming. Like a huge staple. It’s been transformed into an Esports worthy game and every once a year they hold a huge tournament. League players themselves are really competitive and that’s why you hear so many jokes about League players mainly being angry men.
League of Legends is a hit amongst the public, but just because a game is popular or sells millions of copies makes it good right? Wrong. Not saying League of Legends is a bad game or anything, but I have heard a lot of complaints about the core design and how it has changed overtime. Some matches are drawn out longer than they should be, some heroes aren’t balanced that well, some game modes are really repetitive, and a majority of the time matches are spent running around empty areas searching for the other team. I don’t like MMOs in general and never had any interest in playing League. I have no knowledge of League of Legends at all until recently. All my friends told me that once you start playing League you develop a little symptom we all know as self-loathing, because it’s a terrible game you can’t stop playing for some odd reason. I don’t care about League, but I do care about Arcane. This is a question we should have gotten to faster, “Do you need to have any prior knowledge of League of Legends to understand whatever is happening in Arcane?” The answer is no, happily. No, you don’t need to know anything about League of Legends at all even though it takes place within the same universe. It borrows existing characters and elements, but what Arcane serves to do is provide background to these characters and explain how they became the way they are. A backstory if you will. A new universe and world is set before us, and all we have to do is sit back and watch. Enjoy the story that is being told to us and stop caring about what League of Legends is. Probably for the better anyways. Okay, now we can start talking about Arcane and what it is.
The Story of Arcane (Episodes 1-3)
The story of Arcane takes place in this magical world where apparently magic has almost been long forgotten. Mankind has surely prospered along with other mythical fantasy races, and together they have formed massive cities where they can gather. One of the more recognizable cities in this world is Piltover, this spiraling beacon of hope that strides to make the greatest advancements. This maintains this peace though they need law and order, and the way they maintain order in Piltover is…. a little more controversial than it should be. The officers, otherwise known as Enforcers by the residents, that patrol the streets have been known to be rough and downright corrupt at times. However, they have maintained peace and Piltover is the perfect place to grasp opportunities into the palm of your hands. Not everyone who lives in Piltover can afford the luxury of a wondrous lifestyle, and there are even those who absolutely hate Piltover and how it’s governors view the world outside their gold streaked chambers. This leads us to the undercity, Zaun, where the low lifes and the dirtier citizens of this region lie. Zaun is filled with more crime than Piltover, and the people who reside here live a more rough lifestyle as at any moment they can be in debt or beaten dead in the streets. However, they enjoy living in Zaun despite the crummieness and lawful order has been maintained for quite some time without Enforcers thanks to their leader, Zander. The two cities are basically a cat and dog, they work well alone but when put together trouble is made. They don’t trust each other and fear that one of them will one day pull the trigger on the other. They try to negotiate and make deals, so that another disaster never happens again. That rebellion which happened years ago.
Years ago before present day, Zander once tried leading a rebellion against Piltover. He armed his strongest fighters, and prepared them to march across a bridge that connected Piltover and Zaun. They were trying to fight for their right in the world and show Zaun they weren’t going to stand up to their repression and violent forces. Enforcers were then sent towards the bridge and soon it led to a bloody battle. Citizens of Zaun were beaten up, torched, and gunned down while Enforcers enclosed them. Zander stood his ground and managed to save whatever survivors there were. We then see two little girls navigating the battlefield in search of their parents. They helped participate in the rebellion and when they finally locate them it is already too late. The two girls find their parents lying dead on the ground, and Zander tries to comfort them while they weep over their corpses. Rather than leave the childrens alone, Zander decides to take them both in and raise them as his own. They were now his daughters and he would do the best he could to make sure they could determine right from wrong. Hopefully make them the heroes of tomorrow.
Flashforward a few years after the rebellion and we see those two little girls that Zander took in as his own have grown a bit. The older sister is a pink haired, bold rufian who is willing to take dares and beat down anyone who lunges into her path. The younger sister is a blue haired, shy, clumsy pipsqueak who can’t do much compared to her older sister, but is willing to tag along on adventures and help out in any way they can. The older sister is named Vi and the younger is named Powder, and the both of them will stay together no matter what happens. The two sisters also have two adopted brothers who Vander took in as well, Mylo and Claggor, and under Vi’s command they will make treacherous journeys through Piltover to steal some high valued goodies and make some cash for the whole team. During their most recent expedition, the four children stumble upon what seems to be a hidden laboratory. The apartment which they snuck into is full of high tech equipment, but they can’t seem to turn on or function without a power source. While Vi and the two brothers begin shoving the equipment into sacks, Powder stumbles into a room with a locked casket. When she opens the casket she finds several crystals with an ominous blue glow. They look unstable and something neither Zaun or Piltover have seen, but she believes they possess high value and takes them anyways. The children then hear a knock on the door. The owner of the apartment laboratory had returned. They bar down the door and make a run for it, but immediately once their owner barges in, Powder drops one of the crystals she stole and it causes a huge energetic explosion. No one got killed during the explosion, but the explosion did catch the eyes of the entire city. The group loses the goods they stole during a fight, but Powder manages to keep the crystals she stole in her pocket. Once they return home to the undercity, Zander makes them aware that their recent heist is all over. Soon a group of Enforcers come to Zander and tell him that they are looking for the individual who caused the explosion. They want them to owe up and if they don’t then the citizens of Zaun will probably see another incident similar to what happened during the rebellion. The Enforcers leave and the family is trying to determine what to do. While Zander tries to form some sort of deal so that Vi or Powder don’t get taken away, the rest of his friends in Zaun try to convince them to let them fight. The steaks are rising and what was to come wasn't be pretty.
The story doesn’t just revolve around Powder, Vi, and the conflict that arises in Zaun. There’s a second part of the story that follows one of the future researchers of Piltover. Jayce, someone who almost died alongside his mother while venturing through a blizzard storm, but were saved by a magical figure whom they believed was a magician. A sorcerer if you will. The sorcerer gave Jayce a crystal that allowed them to cast the spell, a stone that possessed magic and could be harnessed. Ever since that day, Jayce has been trying to harness the energy within these stones and now that he’s part of the academy he has all the equipment he needs to begin testing. One day when he’s returning home he finds that his apartment is locked up and that someone has broken in through the balcony. This is when the explosion happened and luckily Jayce didn’t get killed. However, the council of Piltover found out that he was experimenting with an unknown resource and sent him to court to justify what he was doing. Jayce was trying to harness the energy within these crystals, and believed that if Piltover can master the energy within they could develop high tech machinery they have never seen before. The council acknowledges his actions, but refuses to let him bring magic into the world. Rather than put him behind the bars, the council decides to just ban him from the academy and destroy whatever testing materials he possesses. Jayce returns to what is now an empty lab, and when he thinks about taking his life he is then confronted by another student. Viktor, a crippled assistant to one of the council members who believes Jayce’s research can actually help people if properly atoned two. The two students soon become close friends and plan to create a brighter future for Piltover.
That’s what I want to explain for Arcane at the moment. I could go into more delta beyond the basics, but that’s why I have a spoiler section to address later events and address a couple of ideas that this show gets right. I’ll label it as spoilers to you all know. Anyways, let’s move on as you all just went through a four paragraph explanation.
Maintaining Style and Substance
You may have heard this phrase before, “Style over substance”. What does it mean exactly? Well it takes a little bit of explanation to fully understand. The easiest way I can personally describe it is through video games, so expect me to ramble on for a bit. Two of the most important staples to a video game is the core game design and the overarching narrative. Have gameplay that is well made and engaging, and make sure the narrative pushes them forward to see what lies at the end. These two aspects are important and if either or doesn’t get enough effort put into them then prepare to face some criticism. Two other aspects I used to heavily appreciate were music and art design. I absolutely love games with a unique artstyle, visual flare, or differentiate themselves through means besides photorealism. It’s great, but what happens when you spend too much time towards the art design, graphics, or music rather than the two major aspects. What happens when you choose how the game looks rather than how it plays? What happens when you don’t put enough care into the story, writing, or consistency with the rules you have invented for your world? You get a video game that stumbles around and crumbles onto the foundation you built. That long explanation is what we refer to as, “Style over substance”. It doesn’t necessarily mean the video game is bad. Is focusing mainly on style alway bad? No. Some games are so strong with their stylization that it outmasks the areas they struggle in. The Artful Escape, Gris, Abzu, and The Pathless are all titles that centralize themselves on their art design and the beautiful sequences they place you into. The gameplay may not be much, but your eyes are too distracted with what is presented. Style versus substance is basically a rope being tugged back and forth, but there are video games that find the middle ground. The games that find an even mixture between style and substance. Hollow Knight, Hyper Light Drifter, Return of The Obra Dinn, and all four of the Supergiant Games, especially Hades, are all good examples of maintaining both style and substance. The artstyle for these games are spectacular and the soundtracks help convey the themes/tones these games aim for, but the core game design is still well put together and the world building engages the players ever so thoroughly. There’s so many other examples of games I could use, but we really need to get back to Arcane.
Arcane looks like one of those shows which would choose style and bumble around is substance, but the exact opposite ended up happening. What we ended up with is a show which has strong substance and strong style. A sturdy foundation and carved out smiled. The story, world building, and characters of Arcane are all spectacular and remain consistent from beginning to end, but the way the show stylized itself keeps your eyes glued onto the screen. The action, the artstyle, the cinematography, the direction, the pacing, and the music all help give Arcane this dance it formed by itself. Let’s start off with artstyle as it reminds me of a couple of things. Everyone has proportionate body geometry and portions, but the way the characters are colored and designed give off this feeling like they were made using oil pastels. If you don’t know, oil pastels are paintings made of a binder mixture of non-drying oil and wax. It’s like crayons, but the substance is more slippery and leaves behind a more slick look rather than a rough scraped on one. You can then blend the oil pastels in such a way where they transition into each other without there having to be obvious borders. This helps create some really unique patterns and textures, and the colors used don’t always have to be in order. Instead of transitioning from red to orange, you could do red to green or blue to gray. It takes a lot of work, but if you can pull it off you can make some really nice looking pictures. That’s what they try to do here with Arcane, make it look like an oil pastel painting in my mind. You can see the different directed streaks, the way they transition into different colors and shading, and what seems like a gentle paint brush rubbed along each surface. The closest thing this art style reminded me of was Dishonored, an immersive sim that also shared an oil pastel artstyle. Come to think of it, the setting of Arcane reminded me of Dishonored and for some reason it reminded me of Bioshock: Infinite. I’ll explain this more in the spoiler section. This is a tiny detail my sister had to point out to me, but it’s nice for every shot in the show they don’t blur out the background or anything happening behind the main characters. If an important character is doing something important and the camera spans out then there won’t be anything like motion blur or blurring out set pieces to keep up with what is going on screen. It means they didn’t want the engine the show was running on to lag so much, or make it look like the geometry and physics were spazzing. Plus it means if you’re someone who likes a specific scene and the way it’s stylized you can take a screenshot and use it as a proper background. That’s also something my sister told me as well.
The pacing and direction of Arcane is well done and it never feels like events are being played out at the wrong time or moment. When the show needs to be going alone it should, and when an emotional moment is playing on screen they take their time but not so much to the point that it takes more than ten minutes. It’s because each episode is only forty minutes long, and if you’re someone who is saying that sounds like a lot of time then I bet you wouldn’t know where to take direction if you were the one storyboarding each episode. (Calm breathing) Ahem. The cinematography in Arcane is a site to see as the show wants you to know how beautiful this magical world is. They want you to get familiar with key locations immediately and wonder if there is something else they are missing. Nope. Just the site to behold. Action is choreographed pretty well and this is where the stylization for Arcane stands atop. The camera shifts around with each punch launched, you feel the weight of every attack as they shatter what they hit, and you can see our fighters get more worn out by each passing second as they spit blood out of their mouth. The fights are great, but at least they don’t overstay their welcome as well. Arcane isn't a show that mainly drives itself forward using combat and it certainly isn’t entirely focused on combat.
The soundtrack for Arcane is surprisingly good and they hired a lot of well acclaimed bands and musicians to compose the songs for this show. That’s right. All the songs in Arcane are original. I mean they are being created by musicians outside of Riot Games, but it’s original. We have songs from Bea Miller, Woodkid, PVRIS, Fantastic Negrito, and the one all you readers probably recognize the most is Imagine Dragons. They wrote the opening theme for Arcane, Enemy, which plays every time you start up a new episode. It’s pretty catchy and it helps relate to the later themes of the show. Well this statement is about to offend a lot of you. I haven’t actually heard of any of these artists besides Imagine Dragon, and I haven’t listened to any of their songs before. What they had to show here was great and I can tell they are all extremely talented artists. I just feel bad for not having much musical taste. I guess this is what happens when you listen to Miracle of Sound, Darren Korb, and so many video game soundtracks all the time. Like I said, “Not much musical taste”. Stylization, action, and music is done great in Arcane and it helps make the show stand out from the crowd.
Sacrifices Must Be Made (Spoilers)
Around episode three is when the oncoming chaos starts rising over the borders. Vi prepares to turn herself in for the explosion caused in Piltover, but before she can do so Vander locks her up and turns himself in instead. Making a sacrifice for his people. The Enforcers arrive to cuff Vander up, but before they can even take him away to a Piltover prison an unknown attacker comes in and kills the captain using a creature he had created. His name is Silco and he has been watching from afar for many years. He’s Vander brother and long before the present day the two of them got caught in a brutal fight. Vander got the edge on Silco and began drowning him beneath deep waters, but Silco survived and has planned his revenge since then. He was trying to convince his peaceful brother that if he were to go back to his violent ways then they can achieve their dream of making Zaun an independent city not in control of Piltover. Vander disagreed and this has created hatred between the two. Silco had developed a substance known as Shimmer, basically a drug that corrupts a person’s mind but allows them to mutate their body into a stronger form for a short period of time. Silco had recently developed a proper controllable form of Shimmer and he plans to pass around the streets of Zaun. In the meantime he has some catching up with his brother. Vi sees the chaos happen through a window and breaks out of the room she is trapped in. She gathers Mylo and Claggor, tells Powder to stay at home, and the three of them prepare to storm Silco’s hideout to rescue Vander and bring him home. Powder feels sad that she isn’t capable of helping anyone, but then she remembers the crystal she stole from the laboratory. She finally figured out the crystal was the object that caused the explosion, and maybe she could use the crystal to help her siblings from afar. She does just that, but just when Vi finally breaks Vander from his chains a huge explosion similar to the laboratory accident occurs. One even bigger than before. The hideout is set ablaze, debris is sent flying in several directions, and during this explosion Mylo and Claggor are killed. Silco’s goons begin closing in on a heavily injured Vi, but Vander decides to down some Shimmer to mutate himself into a ferocious beast. He fights Silco’s men and saves Vi before the building completely collapses. Vander dies after bearing several wounds and this leaves Vi freaked the f*ck out. Her entire family is dead, but Powder is still alive and she comes to tell Vi that she used the crystals to cause the massive explosion which then “saved” them. Vi releases that Powder is to blame for the death of her family and berates her for the action she had taken. She leaves Powder behind, but just before she disappears she witnesses Silco and his goons surround Powder. He found Powder alone sobbing in the streets with no family, and seeing the little girl distressed brings out a little care from him for once. He decides to take Powder in as his own and raise her to do his deeds, but before Vi can stop him she is then taken away by a surviving Enforcer from earlier named Marcus.
Several years pass and both Piltover and Zaun have made tremendous progress. Jayce and Viktor were able to harness the powers of those energetic crystals, and prove to the council that magic could exist in the modern world. Technological advancements were achieved, flying contraptions were sent high into the sky, they formed gateways that could allow Piltover to make deals with other cities and ship goods to them, and Jayce and Viktor formed their own company to develop new equipment and share it with all of Piltover. Hextech, the first magic based company approved and funded by the council. Meanwhile, in Zaun the streets have transformed from a peaceful yet lowlife city into a neon lit district full of illegal trade and business. Crime has risen since Vander died and Silco is now in charge. He has been producing Shimmer by the numbers and some of the citizens of Zaun have transformed into Shimmer-addicts. He has a new goal similar to before, and that is to make the council of Piltover realize that Zaun can be an independent nation. The way he achieves this goal is by sending his best servants to carry out terrorist attacks in Piltover and steal goods they could use as their own. One of these many servants being the adoptive daughter he took in years ago, Powder, who now goes by the name Jinx due to how her siblings called her that name whenever she screwed up an operation. Her mind is now distraught since she is to blame for the death of her family, but she tries to ignore this mental torment going on in her head and pretend that her family is still alive. She has improved her handiwork since she was little and developed deadly bombs for her operations. She possesses heavy weaponry and is willing to kill whenever. She’s gone mad and no one really has control over her. Even Silco knows Jinx is someone you shouldn’t mess with.
From here the show really starts to develop further and we get to see the many conflicts that arise with the characters we knew earlier. Vi is still alive and is struggling to live each day since she is considered a criminal, but one day she is busted out of jail by an Enforcer named Caitlyn. She was one of Jayce’s friends who wished to help him with his work, but her parents didn’t allow it and made her become an Enforcer instead. She has been investigating the terrorist attacks popping up around Piltover recently, and asks Vi if she recognizes any of the evidence seen since she knows what crimes arises down in Zaun. Vi tries to ignore her questions at first until Caitlyn shows her a mark left behind at one of the attack sites. It’s a design similar to the drawings Powder used to make when she was a child, meaning that Vi’s little sister is still out there. She promises to help Caitlyn, but she wants her to help find Powder.
Jayce is busy developing new Hextech equipment alongside Viktor, but is given the opportunity to become a member of the council. He is skeptical at first, but agrees to go along with it. He rises in power and begins to forget the hard work around him as he tries to raise his public image. Viktor on the other hand is busy working on his next achievement, and during this process he realizes his body is slowly breaking down. Viktor’s condition is getting worse and he needs to find a way to fix it if he wants to live any longer. Jayce promised to help Viktor at first, but it seems l;ike Viktor will have to take matters into his own hands now that his once best friend is slowly transforming into one of the corrupt councilmen they speak to every week. He’ll have to meet an old friend and do something he didn’t think he would ever do.
Eventually Vi locates Powder, otherwise Jinx, and during their reunion Caitlyn identifies Powder as Jinx. The terrorist who blew up mass amounts of property and murdered several. Jinx’s mind starts to break down yet again seeing her sister is with an Enforcer, and the thoughts of her sisters abandoning her again begin to flood her mind. She escapes the scene and afterwards her mind breaks down more. Jayce is called in to investigate the terrorist attacks and he doesn’t do a great job with addressing the issues on hand. Tension rises between the two cities and it seemed like they were ready to go to war unless certain conditions were met.
I’m going to cut out everything beyond this, because I don’t want to spoil everything Arcane has to offer. Instead I’m going to reveal the ideas and topics the show gets right. One of these being class division and tension. Piltover and Zaun have their goals and reasons, but what they fail to do is realize the several problems they have themselves. Piltover aims for success and control of the people, but fails to do anything to contain the violence spreading through the streets. They fail to even listen to Zaun and see the terrible lifestyle citizens down there live everyday and some of it is caused by the Enforcers above. Zaun wants to become independent and show the world what they can achieve on their own, but there is no control whatsoever and it seems like fights break out in the streets everyday. Their most skillful killer, Jinx, had gotten out of control and is now disobeying the actions Silco assigns her. Going crazier by the day. You watch as these two cities struggle and get ready for war, but that doesn’t exactly happen. They try to negotiate. They try to maintain control, but it all keeps getting worse. It’s interesting and the politics of Arcane are well thought out. It’s not being shoved down your throat, but it is confident.
Another is risk and how most of the characters in the second and third act of Arcane are taking more risks than before. Jayce sacrificed his career to establish himself as a councilman. Viktor slowly changes his body and experiments with materials he has no comprehension of. Jinx is trying to throw out any stable relationship she has and struggling to figure out who she is. The one character who I think conveys this theme of risk and sacrifice the best is the main villain. Silco. They could have played him off as the guy who doesn’t care. He takes in this little girl and teaches her to be a mindless killer. He could have just viewed her as a toll, but deep down there was some humanity left in him. He witnessed Jinx being abandoned by her family, once his family, something he had experience with. Silco raised Jinx as his daughter and for once he had family. He had someone he could care for and they could care back. Later on in the show he is given this option. This option where he can sacrifice the family he cares about for his dream of an independent city or not. He considers it at first and just when you think he is about to make this decision he doesn’t. He doesn’t want to lose what little he has to care for, what made him feel more human than before. He realizes the sacrifice he had to make and the risks there were for his original goal. He’s a villain you can understand and somewhat sympathize with.
Sacrifices must be made, and Arcane shows the mental and personal struggles a person may face when placed under stressful or heartbreaking conditions. So. (Claps hands together) Onto the ending of this long rear end cheek review.
Final Thoughts
Arcane is a fantastic show and I highly recommend watching it sometime in the future. It’s a Netflix exclusive to remind you, so it does require a subscription or trial. You could just find a website to watch it on, then again that probably won’t go so well if you don’t want your computer or phone getting corrupted with possible viruses. Netflix doesn’t really have that many good exclusives, but Arcane is one of those very few that does stand out. The story is great and it kept me engaged from beginning to end. The characters are all likable and you really get to understand some of the more douchier characters that appear later on. The artstyle is great, the action is packed, and a lot has been put into making Arcane look damn amazing. The ending of the last episodes leaves a lot to be desired for an upcoming season, and luckily they confirmed that they are making a season two for Arcane which I am really hyped for. I cannot stress enough how much I ended up enjoying this. This is the biggest surprise to happen to me this year and it might just be my favorite thing I watched this year. I have little to nothing to complain about Arcane and I really hope that this show ages well. I hope season two is as good as season one. This show definitely didn’t convince me to play League of Legends or any MMO in general, but it has gotten me to care for these characters and this universe. If I were to give this show a rating it would be a high one. I am going to give season one of Arcane a 10/10 for being incredible.
Comments